The Better Half

by Sarah Harte

  ‘Just with the separation,’ I’d said, ‘and the uncertainty over Dad’s planning. Everything’s up in the air.’

  I still had not sat down with Frank in any meaningful way and talked about money. My brain got jammed when I started to think of what might happen. I found it impossible to imagine a new life. I had also told Dylan that it was unwise to settle down too young and that he should sow his wild oats.

  He had raged at that. ‘Sow my wild oats?’ he’d said, eyes boggling. ‘What mother says that to her son?’ He had jabbed the air with his finger accusingly. ‘You just don’t like Biba!’

  No shit, Sherlock. I wasn’t going to say that, though. So I had stuck to my guns, which meant that since then, on the rare occasions that he was in, Dylan had hung over his meals sullenly, slouching around the place as if I was public enemy number one. He was used to getting his way with me. He was not used to me saying no. I had always been a soft touch. It was uncharted territory for us both.

  Now more heat came into his cheeks. ‘We’re very serious about each other,’ he said, looking acutely self-conscious.

  I was suffused with a mixture of love and sadness. I stared at my foot, which I was still tapping. I did not need a drink, I told myself. I could handle this situation without alcohol. I did not need to be numbed. I had to let my baby boy go. My baby boy was a twenty-two-year-old man. My baby boy and the over-perfumed party girl with the cartoon sexiness. I had thought he might never move out of the coach house. That it would be a case of till death did us part. That was what I had sort of hoped for, in a guilty, stifling Irish-mammy way.

  ‘If you let her move in it would be different,’ he said.

  ‘You wouldn’t go, you mean.’

  He nodded, his eyes sliding away from mine guiltily.

  I did not particularly like Biba, with her decorative smiles, which seemed insincere. Maybe she was lovely. Maybe she and I were just one more link in a long chain of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law battles. I would not be browbeaten, though.

  I forced my voice into a pleasant neutrality: ‘It’s your decision, Dylan, just as it’s your life,’ I said, trembling a little. It was his life, I thought, and stood up. I patted his face. ‘Don’t look so worried,’ I said, producing a smile. ‘You’re going to be a northsider.’ This was my half-arsed attempt at a joke. I blew him a kiss. ‘I’m going out with Auntie Karen. See you later.’

  11

  The sun was beating down as I drove the Range Rover out of the gates. It had cost as much as the price of a small car to mend. I had queried the bill with the mechanic, who had looked at me as if I’d grown an extra head. I had never even read the figure before, never mind questioned the amount. I drove out of his garage and decided I should sell the thing. It was becoming like a relic from another age.

  I was on my way to the airport. Ella was coming home. She knew about Frank, thanks to some little cow who had Facebooked her to see if she was ‘hanging in there’ after the sad split of her parents. There had been ructions on the phone. It had taken all my strength to persuade her not to jack in the job and come home to strangle her father. She knew nothing about the cluster of cells, living somewhere around the Stillorgan dual carriageway, that was fast turning into a new brother or sister.

  I had considered taking a Valium. I hadn’t, though. I could see where my subconscious was going with that – give up booze and take up swallowing Valium instead. This time I was a couple of steps ahead of my true nature. Some people were like that: if they ate chocolate they ate too much; if they exercised, they overdid it. I was a Butler. And Butlers were weak-willed, undisciplined, addictive types. But I was waking up with something approaching mental clarity. For the first time in ages I glimpsed new shoots. I was like Lazarus risen from the dead, I thought, edging my way into the afternoon traffic. I was in charge of a reclamation project of sorts. If the Dutch could reclaim all that land from the sea, then maybe I could reclaim part of myself.

  Ella had come zigzagging across the airport floor, her laden trolley refusing to obey her.

  ‘Hey, Mom,’ she’d said, almost breezily. I eyed her: she normally called me ‘Mum’. She had allowed me to hug her but didn’t really hug me back. Her fists were clenched, I’d noticed.

  ‘No Christopher?’

  ‘He got a different flight,’ she’d said shortly.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We broke up. I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  That was a lie. Long, thin, intense face aside, and snout cockily tilted upwards, he wasn’t the worst. But I was in my backside sorry. I’d stuck on a regretful face, though.

  ‘Don’t pretend, Mum.’ Her going native hadn’t lasted all that long. She cocked an eye at me. ‘I know you didn’t like him. And you were totally right,’ she’d said, giving me the ghost of a smile.

  Now we were speeding along in the Range Rover – Thelma and fecking Louise. And there was still no mention of Frank. It was eerie. My maternal radar beeped furiously. This was not good. ‘We should talk about Dad, love,’ I ventured. Obviously there was a part of me that could have listened to her all day jabbering on about America but I was concerned too.

  ‘Not now, Mum,’ she said, her face turning to flint. ‘I’m bushed. And I don’t want to talk about that disloyal pervert,’ she said venomously.

  ‘Don’t speak about your father like that.’

  She began to talk about the internship. ‘It was great. I mean, it was kind of demanding but it was great. This other intern, like, discovered that this man who had been on Death Row for twenty years couldn’t have committed the crime. The evidence had been overlooked by the trial lawyer, who was some sort of alcoholic, and that was, like, a major rush, a sort of realization of what lawyers can do. I didn’t unearth anything like that,’ she said, letting a shoulder drop a little, ‘but we all felt kind of part of it.’

  Her accent hadn’t changed, but the rhythms of her conversation were definitely more American.

  She frowned. ‘I’m not sure I’d like to make criminology my life. It could get sort of depressing. And I’m not sure if you can ever really change things at a systemic level.’

  Pathetic, but when my daughter spoke like that I wanted to broadcast her over a Tannoy.

  ‘What that girl did was exceptional. The legal system itself is basically fine. Criminality is a broader issue to do with poverty and lack of advantage in society.’ She had loved New York. ‘MOMA was one of my favourite places. It just had so much energy. I spent a lot of time there, looking at the paintings and just soaking up the atmosphere. Even the building was glamorous. There were so many amazing places to hang out in New York. I think this bar called Schillers was probably my favourite. It did great cocktails, although I couldn’t actually drink them because they are so incredibly up their arses about minors not drinking.’ She pulled a face. ‘It was soooo annoying. It really did my head in at times. Anyhow it was cool in a laid-back kind of way. Jamie Deegan brought me there actually. I saw him a bit. He lives in this amazing loft in TriBeCa. Surprise, surprise,’ she said, rolling her eyes in her trademark ironic way.

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said, her expression softening, ‘Yeah, Jamie’s actually not that bad. Better than I thought.’ She was toying with her scarf. ‘He’s quite witty. And he said he liked MOMA a lot. I mean, you wouldn’t really think it, what with him having been such a rugger bugger at school.’

  Ella had always been allergic to the rugby scene. ‘And he’s very sort of …’ she stuck her bottom lip out ‘… energetic, I guess, would be the word. He’s a doer, you know.’

  I was hearing a lot about Jamie.

  ‘Of course, Christopher hated him but that’s not an indication of anything,’ she said, the muscles around her mouth tightening. ‘I mean, Christopher hated everything.’

  I said nothing. Inside I was doing a dance and singing happy songs. Yee-ha, bye-by
e, Christopher.

  She burbled on for another while until I stopped her, my heart suddenly leaden. ‘Ella,’ I said, ‘I have something I need to tell you.’

  She had made me drive her directly to Frank’s offices. There had been no reasoning with her once I’d broken the news of the baby. ‘I want to talk to him!’ she had shouted. After that she had said nothing. She had sat in the passenger seat with her fists balled, staring out the window in deathly silence.

  I had waited in the car. Karen had rung me to find out if I’d told her. ‘Oh, he’s in big trouble so,’ she had said. ‘You know what girls and their daddies are like.’ Karen had no idea just how bad a time Frank was in for with Ella. She didn’t really know Ella. You didn’t mess with our Ella. Ella had even been extremely strict with her dolls growing up. Those dolls had had a terrible time.

  Now Ella was running out of the building with Frank after her. He was shouting something but she didn’t stop. She was hell bent on reaching the car. Her face was contorted with a mixture of fury and determination. She groped for the door handle. ‘Drive!’ she said, slamming the door.

  Frank was cupping his hands around his mouth, moving forward. He caught my eye, a regretful lame-dog glance that said, ‘What do I do? Tell me! How do I make it right?’

  For one second we were briefly united as parents. But then the moment passed. I felt like rolling down the window and asking him where he had thought the affair would end. Had he reckoned he could sail off with his girlfriend and get her pregnant without collateral damage?

  I felt so sad for my lovely daughter. And also a little for Frank. Ella had had him on a pedestal. And now he had tumbled down.

  ‘Mum, drive!’ she yelled.

  So I indicated and we pulled out, leaving Frank gazing after us like a distressed goldfish. All-powerful Frank, who, with the broad shoulders, no neck and bowling-ball head, now looked small and diminished in the rear-view mirror, a middle-aged man in a shirt who had fucked up. There’s no fool like an old fool.

  Ella was motionless, making no sound.

  ‘Ella.’

  Nothing. I braked and pulled into the side of the road, swerving as I nearly side-rammed a car I hadn’t seen. The driver put up his finger and beeped, as he had every right to do. Putting on my hazards I leant over and tried to circle my arms around her shoulders, but she twisted away from me. ‘Ella,’ I tried again. I could feel a stinging in my own eyes. ‘Ella,’ I said, cupping her face with my hands.

  It was then that the dam burst. She started to cry, great big sobs that shook her whole body. I tried to comfort her again. This time she didn’t push me away. Her words were half muffled as she turned her silky head and her lovely Ella smell into my chest. ‘She’s six years older than me!’ she cried.

  And although my heart was breaking for my daughter, part of me was relieved. Ella was very self-sufficient emotionally while Dylan had always been clingy. She had relentlessly applied logic to every situation. When one of their hamsters had eaten the other and Dylan had bawled over the blood-spattered cage, Ella had delivered the line that we should have read the book on hamsters. When she found me watching made-for-television movies about mothers dying of cancer and leaving behind telegenic, strangely well behaved children, she cast me withering looks. And, of course, she was right. But there had been times when I’d wondered if she was a little cold. Times when – and I’d instantly quelled this scary thought – I’d wondered if she might be a little like Frank’s mam. The thought had scared the bejaysus out of me, which was why I was glad to see this outburst of emotion.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ she said, clinging on to me and allowing me to tighten the hug.

  Later we sat in the kitchen. The ridiculously big kitchen. Future generations would excavate our homes and marvel. Sociologists and anthropologists would ask, ‘Why did they need so much space?’

  It was more like an art gallery than a kitchen. All white with one bold accent of neon pink – one painted wall. The lights were dimmed. The evening had drawn in. We were sitting at the island, sharing a lasagne. I was struggling not to calculate the fat and calorie content. We were drinking sparkling mineral water. If Ella had noticed I wasn’t drinking wine, she hadn’t mentioned it. I said nothing. I was making no prognostications or claims for myself. One day at a time, sweet Jesus.

  Ella was perched on a high stool, one long leg tucked under her bottom. There was some colour in her cheeks now. That was the thing about youth: it was resilient. She was hurting but already she was moving forward. ‘I can’t believe Dylan would move in with Biba so soon. I think she’s a user, Mum. And Dylan doesn’t see it.’ She railed against the stupidity of men. Christopher had been very lazy, she said, her face darkening. ‘He spent his days on the sofa watching shit TV,’ she said, with disgust. ‘Half the time he didn’t even make it into work. He thought he was all brooding and into existentialism but actually he was just idle and into pizza.’

  She had darted me a sideways look. ‘And, Mum, like, I don’t want to shock you but he was a total stoner. He spent most of the day lying around like a vegetable smoking dope.’

  I nodded as if I was struggling to take on board this shocking information. God help her head. If she only knew – not just about Ciara and her little nose straw or loads of the other people who had come to our parties over the years but about her uncle Keith who had been a total dope-head before he ran off to England for receiving the stolen tellies. Or Karen and Darren who in their salad days had been well into smoking weed. Or me – and my inner smile receded pretty quickly when I thought of this – ending up in hospital with a suspected overdose. Or, and I was in the horrors at this thought, my forthcoming drink-driving charge.

  It was true that I had always felt the hypocrisy of delivering the ‘Just say no, kids’ lecture when a significant proportion of the people I knew, and even palled around with, kept half of Dublin’s drug dealers and publicans in business.

  Inevitably the conversation drifted back to Frank. Ella’s face crumpled a little when she spoke of him. She said she hated him, but it sounded hollow.

  ‘He’s your father,’ I said, ‘and that won’t change. He’s been a good father and he loves you so much.’ I was like Mother Teresa. But what I had said was true. Frank loved Ella. And Ella loved him.

  I didn’t want people saying bad things about him anyway. Maeve had started to run him down and I’d stopped her. It didn’t help me if people badmouthed him.

  ‘Are you leaving the door open for him?’ Maeve had asked, with her uncanny ability to get to the nub of the matter.

  I had shaken my head, not really knowing the answer. I didn’t think so, but you couldn’t just trash an entire marriage, a whole life. I had said something like that to Ella when she asked me if I hated him.

  ‘You love somebody deeply, spend more than half your life with them, you don’t just wake up and stop,’ I had told her.

  ‘How could he do that to us, Mum? How could he?’ she asked, clamping her hand to her forehead.

  I wanted to say to her that life was complicated. It wasn’t like a maths problem with a definite outcome or a legal essay with a defined start, middle or end. Frank had betrayed me and I was sad. But that hadn’t made me stop loving him.

  ‘He’s so having a mid-life crisis. That’s so obvious. It’s pathetic,’ she had said, her eyes moistening. ‘You think a twenty-five-year-old would go for a fifty-year-old if he wasn’t rich? Dad’s deluding himself. She’s into him for his money. She totally wouldn’t go for a guy of Dad’s age if he was poor.’ Her brow knitted. ‘Dad’s a cliché!’

  Frank’s number flashed up on the phone. Then Maeve was calling me. Then Ciara’s name appeared on the screen. They’d have to wait, I thought, turning off the phone.

  Ella was in her room on her phone. I could hear her voice dipping and rising. Gut instinct told me she was making a transatlantic call. And that the recipient of the call might be a young male
neighbour of ours, one Jamie Deegan. I cleansed my face and drifted to bed, feeling strangely happy.

  When I turned my phone back on, there was a cacophony of beeps as successive messages assaulted me.

  Maeve: ‘Where the hell are you? Ring me, for God’s sake. Have you seen a paper? It’s the Thornleys. You’re never going to believe …’ There was barely contained glee in her voice.

  Ciara: ‘Ring me, Anita. I presume you’ve heard about Dermot Thornley.’

  Maureen: ‘It’s terrible about those friends of yours. It’s hard to believe that anyone would behave like that …’

  Shannon: ‘God, I feel so sorry for Tracey. I feel so bad for bitching about her and the bag – although looks like some of our buddies may have bought that bag. Remember, innocent until proven guilty. He’s only being investigated …’

  Karen: ‘Looks like one of your cronies has been caught with his mucky fingers in the till. Do not pass Go, straight to jail.’

  After I’d tried, and failed, to get Frank on the phone, I drove to the garage, a coat thrown over my pyjamas, to get a paper. There on the newspaper rack, in the late edition of a tabloid, was a picture of Dermot and Tracey clutching glasses of champagne at some charity event underneath a screaming headline. Dermot was being investigated for misappropriation of client funds and for false accounting. A number of complaints had been made to the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

  Maeve, when I rang her back, sounded positively energized by the news. ‘I’ve just heard that the Fraud Squad are involved.’

  I could picture her nostrils flaring like the skirts on a Spanish dancer. ‘Oh, God,’ I said. ‘I wonder what this means for Frank. He’s Frank’s accountant.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Maeve said, slightly chastened now.

  Another shot of Dermot showed him climbing down from a helicopter in a linen suit with a mobile phone clamped to his ear, a self-satisfied Celtic Tiger grin stretched across his handsome features.